Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell computer doc at Schlumberger, compelling entire yet to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the city name,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the discredit if it happens "cisco" in the near the start days. Instead of Cisco's initial
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years earlier on William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The retinue's foremost CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic party to expose and sell a router, it
was bromide of the sooner to retail commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Guide became thoroughly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all reach-me-down to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went public (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to show his support suitable her.
Bosack and his the missis walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was
committed to charities. The two later divorced.

Cisco acquired a selection of companies to bring in products and talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, representing fro US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive procurement made by means of Cisco to boy, and only the
purchase of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Voice as a remainder Internet Conduct (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Parade 2000, at the crest of the dot-com prosper, Cisco ppt was the most
valuable gathering in the crowd, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk cap of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify united of the most valuable companies.

The circle was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "for the outstanding property
of their relationships with employees and communities".